They made a fire,—but such a fire as they Upon the moment could contrive with such Materials as were cast up round the bay,— Some broken planks, and oars, that to the touch Were nearly tinder, since so long they lay A mast was almost crumbled to a crutch; But, by God’s grace, here wrecks were in such plenty, That there was fuel to have furnish’d twenty.
He had a bed of furs, and a pelisse, For Haidee stripped her sables off to make His couch; and, that he might be more at ease, And warm, in case by chance he should awake, They also gave a petticoat apiece, She and her maid—and promised by daybreak To pay him a fresh visit, with a dish For breakfast, of eggs, coffee, bread, and fish.
And thus they left him to his lone repose: Juan slept like a top, or like the dead, Who sleep at last, perhaps (God only knows), Just for the present; and in his lull’d head Not even a vision of his former woes Throbb’d in accursed dreams, which sometimes spread Unwelcome visions of our former years, Till the eye, cheated, opens thick with tears.
Young Juan slept all dreamless:—but the maid, Who smooth’d his pillow, as she left the den Look’d back upon him, and a moment stay’d, And turn’d, believing that he call’d again. He slumber’d; yet she thought, at least she said (The heart will slip, even as the tongue and pen), He had pronounced her name—but she forgot That at this moment Juan knew it not.
And pensive to her father’s house she went, Enjoining silence strict to Zoe, who Better than her knew what, in fact, she meant, She being wiser by a year or two: A year or two ’s an age when rightly spent, And Zoe spent hers, as most women do, In gaining all that useful sort of knowledge Which is acquired in Nature’s good old college.
The morn broke, and found Juan slumbering still Fast in his cave, and nothing clash’d upon His rest; the rushing of the neighbouring rill, And the young beams of the excluded sun, Troubled him not, and he might sleep his fill; And need he had of slumber yet, for none Had suffer’d more—his hardships were comparative To those related in my grand-dad’s ‘Narrative.’
Not so Haidee: she sadly toss’d and tumbled, And started from her sleep, and, turning o’er Dream’d of a thousand wrecks, o’er which she stumbled, And handsome corpses strew’d upon the shore; And woke her maid so early that she grumbled, And call’d her father’s old slaves up, who swore In several oaths—Armenian, Turk, and Greek— They knew not what to think of such a freak.